Business

iOS 7 Updates Look a Little Too Familiar to Some Apple Developers

Stephen Orth wondered why Apple didn't use the metadata in photos to better organize pictures in the iPhoto app so, last September, he started developing an app of his own in his spare time to do just that. The result was Photowerks, a 99-cent iPhone app released last month, which lets users sort their photos by date and location.

"I always thought it sounded strange that Apple didn't do that in its photo app," Orth told Mashable in an interview. "I figured it was just a matter of time before they did do it."

As it turned out, it was less than a month before Apple did just that. During the keynote event at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple announced a new option for iPhoto called Moments that automatically organizes a user's photos and videos by — you guessed it — date and location.

Orth was in the audience at the event when Apple unveiled a new feature strikingly similar to his own. His initial thought was, "Well, they finally did it." Shortly afterwards, he posted to Twitter that he and his new app had just been "sherlocked."

The term dates back to 2002 when Apple introduced a search tool called Sherlock 3 that many in the developer community said blatantly ripped off a third-party application called Watson. In the years since, Apple has been accused of lifting features from other companies and apps, and this year's WWDC event was no different. In the course of the two hour keynote, Apple appeared to take features from photo apps like Orth's as well as from existing file-sharing apps, weather apps, music streaming services and password protection tools.

"The gut reaction is always a little bit of surprise, of course, when Apple unveils something that you do," said David Chartier, a rep for AgileBits, whose password management app 1Password may face new competition from Apple's new iCloud Keychain service. "You kind of pause and watch thoroughly to see how far they are going to go with it."

Based on Apple's brief presentation of its password tool, Chartier believes there is still plenty of room to differentiate 1Password from iCloud Keychain, but he says the AgileBits team continues to look at how much Apple's service overlaps with its own. "There's still a lot of unanswered questions about how far Apple did go," he said. "Apple is going to do what Apple is going to do."

Some companies appeared to insult Apple for taking so long to catch up to their features. After Apple unveiled its long-rumored streaming radio service, a Pandora rep told Mashable that the new feature finally brought it "on par" with existing music streaming music services. Others we spoke with view Apple introducing similar features to existing apps as inevitable.

"There is always inspiration in the air that people are taking and putting back into their own apps," said Pierre Valade, co-founder of Sunrise, a popular calendar app whose layout appeared to influence updates to Apple's calendar app. "The fact that they were maybe inspired us, maybe copied us, is fair: we copy other apps too."

Omer Perchik, co-founder of Any.DO, a to-do list app with a similar user interface design to iOS 7, said he was actually "humbled" by the similarities. In fact, he believes the overlap will help his apps in the future because they already "look and feel like native applications" for the new operating system, without requiring a redesign.

The same can't necessarily be said of Photowerks, the app Orth launched last month. Though he plans to add more sharing options and a better search feature to differentiate his app from Apple's before iOS 7 is released in a few months, he admits there's a chance demand for his app will "start trailing off," in which case he will turn his attention to another product.

It wouldn't be the first time this happened to Orth. He introduced an invoice app for iPhone a couple months after the original model was released in 2007. He says the app sold well for about a year before other developers came out with similar products, which cut into his sales.

"There's always the danger that a competitor comes in and makes a better app than you," he says. Unfortunately for iOS developers like Orth, sometimes that competitor turns out to be Apple.

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